You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 34 on the following pages.

Questions 27-33Reading Passage 34 has eight paragraphs ( A-H).
Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-H from the list of headings below.
Write the appropriate numbers (i-x) in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use all of them.

List of Headings

i Common objections
ii Who's planning what
iii This type sells best in the shops
iv The figures say it all
v Early trials
vi They can't get in without these
vii How does it work?
viii Fighting fraud
ix Systems to avoid
x Accepting the inevitable

A Students who want to enter the University of
Montreal's Athletic Complex need more than just a conventional ID card -
their identities must be authenticated by an electronic hand scanner.
In some California housing estates, a key alone is insufficient to get
someone in the door; his or her /Voiceprinfmust also be verified. And
soon, customers at some Japanese banks will have to present their faces
for scanning before they can enter the building and withdraw their
money.

B All of these are applications of biometrics, a
little-known but fast-growing technology that involves the use of
physical or biological characteristics to identify individuals. In use
for more than a decade at some highsecurity government institutions in
the United States and Canada, biometrics are now rapidly popping up in
the everyctay world. Already, more than 10,000 facilities, from prisons
to day-care centres, monitor people's fingerprints or other physical
parts to ensure that they are who they claim to be. Some 60 biometric
companies around the world pulled in at least $22 million last year and
that grand total is expected to mushroom to at least $50 million by
1999.

C Biometric security systems operate by storing a
digitised record of some unique human feature. When an authorised user
wishes to enter or use the facility, the system scans the person's
corresponding characteristics and attempts to match them against those
on record. Systems using fingerprints, hands, voices, irises, retinas
and faces are already on the market. Others using typing patterns and
even body odours are in various stages of development.

D Fingerprint scanners are currently the most widely
deployed type of biometric application, thanks to their growing use over
the last 20 years by law-enforcement agencies. Sixteen American states
now use biometric fingerprint verification systems to check that people
claiming welfare payments are genuine. In June, politicians in Toronto
voted to do the same, with a pilot project beginning next year.

E To date, the most widely used commercial biometric
system is the handkey, a type of hand scanner which reads the unique
shape, size and irregularities of people's hands. Originally developed
for nuclear power plants, the handkey received its big break when it was
used to control access to the Olympic Village in Atlanta by more than
65,000 athletes, trainers and support staff. Now there are scores of
other applications.

F Around the world, the market is growing rapidly.
Malaysia, for example, is preparing to equip all of its airports with
biometric face scanners to match passengers with luggage. And Japan's
largest maker of cash dispensers is developing new machines that
incorporate iris scanner~. The first commercial biometric, a hand reader
used by an American firm to monitor employee attendance, was introduced
in 1974. But only in the past few years has the technology improved
enough for the prices to drop sufficiently to make them commercially
viable. 'When we started four years ago, I had to explain to everyone
what a biometric is,' says one marketing expert. 'Now, there's much more
awareness out there.'

G Not surprisingly, biometrics raise thorny questions
about privacy and the potential for abuse. Some worry that governments
and industry will be tempted to use the technology to monitor individual
behaviour. 'If someone used your fingerprints to match your
health-insurance records with a credit-card record showing you regularly
bought lots of cigarettes and fatty foods,' says one policy analyst,
'you would see your insurance payments go through the roof.' In Toronto,
critics of the welfare fingerprint plan complained that it would
stigmatise recipients by forcing them to submit to a procedure widely
identified with criminals.

H Nonetheless, support for biometrics is growing in
Toronto as it is in many other communities. In an increasingly crowded
and complicated world, biometrics may well be a technology whose time
has come.

Questions 34-40Look at the following groups of people (Questions 34-40) and the list of blol]1etric systems (A-F) below.
Match the groups of people to the biometric system associated with them in Reading Passage 3.
Write the appropriate letters A-F in boxes 34-40 on your answer sheet.

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